Monroe on a Budget

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Grocery shopping on a budget

One of the quickest expenses you can cut in your family budget is the grocery bill. There are a lot of tactics you can use to cut that cost – whether or not you clip coupons.

In keeping with my local spin on frugality, this piece is written for my local readers in Monroe County, Mich. But there are lots of links, tips and ideas that also work for national readers. Feel free to browse through this section; or if you’re looking for a get started list, go to my eight week plan.

How much is the cost of food if you don’t look for the bargains? The U.S. Department of Agriculture has created charts based on what Americans really eat and the cost of the food ingredients. You can look up your family size, age of family members and get a range of grocery expenses based on food choices.

The government charts for October 2008 calculate my monthly grocery budget at $559 on a “thrifty” food plan for dad, mom and college daughter.

But how much is my family’s grocery bill?

Our average grocery expenses for a family of three in 2005 was $409 a month or $4,908 for the year. That was a year when finances were pretty tight for us – my husband was alternating between unemployment and low-paying temporary jobs.

When I analyzed the grocery expenses for 2008, keeping in mind that college daughter is away at college most of the time, I came up with $125 per person per month or $375 a month for three people … which is $4,500 a year.

Yes I dropped our grocery bills by $400 a year by adding one trick after another.

How did I do get the grocery bill that low? I actually do use many of the tips you’ll find in this list!

Stocking up the pantry

So you don’t have a “pantry”? Maybe you live in a small house? So what? I have a small house with limited kitchen space, and I still figured out a pantry area.

What I keep in the kitchen are the groceries I use on a regular basis or would likely use soon. My pantry for the overflow items is a bookshelf and computer desk that we no longer use and have been repurposed as my pantry shelves in my basement. That’s where I keep cereal, potatoes, cases of pop, oranges, rice, beans, and dinners in a box. The toothpaste, soap and toilet paper get stored in the linen closet.

Here are some pantry tips:

  • Stock up on favorite products during sales. The trick to remember is to make sure your family can use the product before it expires. (See “Do you have any cereal coupons?”) Also check out Building Your Stockpile thread at Hot Coupon World.
  • Stop bringing store-bought deli trays and bakery treats to a potluck party or a fundraiser bake sale. You will do much better by purchasing pantry items such as gelatin, canned fruit, cake mix and pudding mix are on special. Then you will always have a potluck item that can be prepared quickly.
  • Create a standing pantry supply list of ingredients your family uses on a regular basis. A really frugal / beginner pantry list is posted at Frugal JD. Other examples are at Frugal Village and at Fly Lady. Adjust the recommendations to suit your needs. If you multi-task with tortillas, that goes on the list. If you rarely use cream of mushroom soup, that doesn’t go on the list. These pantry items are the products you should buy every time you find good prices, whether you have run out or not.
  • Some frugal shoppers keep a price book of their favorite items so they can track what’s really a sale vs. what’s just a promotion. Chief Family Officer explains how that is done and how you can benefit. There is also a thread at Frugal Hacks on how to set up a price book.
  • Check out the possibilities at a bakery outlet store. Aunt Millie’s Bread has a bakery outlet at 6800 Lewis Ave., Temperance. There are also Aunt Millie’s and Wonder Bread / Hostess outlet stores elsewhere in Michigan and Ohio. You can stop by a bakery outlet when you are already in Northwood, Adrian, etc. and stock up on name-brand goodies that you can store in a freezer.
  • If you are a military personnel or dependent family member, a military ID card with commissary listed as one of the privileges is your ticket to cheap name brand groceries at Selfridge Air National Guard base. Mount Clemens is a 90-minute drive from Monroe, but it can be well worth the trip for a carload of groceries. Coupons are welcomed at the commissary at face value, but the prices are already so low they beat double coupon deals. Take a cooler in the car to pack your meat and cold items for the trip home. You’ll need the military ID at the checkout line. (Note: I’m not sure how long this commissary will remain open.)

The freezer

  • If you want to use a stand-alone freezer, think through the logistics. Older appliances can be electricity hogs as compared to the newer models. You also want the smallest freezer that fits your needs because a full freezer uses the cold air more efficiently.
  • What will happen if the power goes out at your house? Do you have a generator to keep emergency power going? We had four lengthy power outages in my neighborhood in 2008 in which I had to put all our refrigerator food on ice. Therefore … I have no plans to get a deep freezer.
  • Freezers are particularly useful for those who want to keep large supplies of meat in storage – hunters who bring home the deer or turkey, families who buy “a half cow” from the butcher, etc.
  • Freezers are also helpful for those with large families. You can buy lots of chicken when it is on sale, for example, and have somewhere to keep it.

Use different products

  • Get used to different cleaning routines and supplies. Yes, it’s convenient to use the pop-up disposable wipes, paper towels and static dusting cloths. But limit them to applications where they are the most appropriate (when you are traveling, for example). It is much more frugal to use sponges, rags or mops with spray, refill-bottled or home recipe cleaning products for house cleaning.
  • When do convenience foods work out better than cooking from scratch? Hillbilly Housewife has a detailed discussion on specific products.

Get organized with your dinner plans

  • Plan family menus in advance so you make the most efficient use of your groceries. Some magazines feature weekly or monthly menus with recommended shopping lists. I usually post a list on the kitchen bulletin board that shows the next two or three days’ dinner plans and who’s going to be home. To help you get organized, Better Budgeting.com has posted spreadsheets that include What’s for Dinner? and What’s for Dinner This Week?.
  • Do some of  your kitchen prep on the weekends for busy weekday dinners.
  • The Washington Post has this chart with pictures: Stretch Your Grocery Dollars, showing a cartload of groceries one could buy on a food stamp budget for a family of four and how to plan frugal meals with those products. The related article by Sally Squires is How Far Can Your Dollar Stretch?
  • Ration out the pricey, individually wrapped snack foods or convenience items by assigning a basket or bin to each family member – or place the items in a bin marked “lunch box only.” Family members can’t complain if they eat up all their allocated treats before the next payday. (For more discussion see How to control grocery costs when kids are in the house.)
  • Meijer has a MealBox site to help you plan menus around grocery sales at Meijer.
  • Aldi has a Meal Planner site featuring its grocery products.
  • Menus4Moms has menus, planners and shopping lists. The free features include menu plans based on Angel Food Ministries groceries.
  • e-Mealz is a paid subscription site with menu recommendations and a variety of money-saving food plans to pick from.
  • Family Fun features kid-friendly recipes and printable shopping lists.
  • The USDA has a pdf booklet with menu plan and recipes for thrifty meals. You’ll find the link on this page with a note that it is an older guide for “historical purposes”.
  • Yes, even smaller households can adapt money-saving tricks to their dinner plans. See this post about cooking for two at Factoidz.

Coupon and rebate tips and tricks

This photo is from one of my shopping trips at Meijer when I used coupons + sales to get nearly half off what these products cost at regular retail prices.

I build my shopping list based on what’s on sale that week at my local stores. There are times when I have to get something that’s not on coupon, sale, rebate, etc. But because I buy as much as I can when the prices are low, the “full price” purchases are few and far between.

Here are some coupon tips:

  • Set up and maintain a coupon box or binder, and take it with you on every grocery store and drugstore trip. If you are new to this concept, I have a post on how to create and maintain a grocery coupon box. I also have an updated/ simplified set of instructions for a community education handout.
  • If you’re looking for other ideas on how to organize your coupons, I did a post on some of the popular methods.
  • I do not recommend coupon matching / deals posting web sites for my local readers because they don’t work in the Monroe County, Mich., market.  (Explanation at Why don’t I recommend a coupon matching site?)
  • CouponMom Stephanie Nelson has some great information for coupon rookies in her eBooks whether or not you use her coupon matching service.
  • Another national coupon matching site is The Grocery Game. But again, if you live and shop in Monroe County, Mich., read my post Pros and Cons of the Grocery Game before you pay for that service.
  • SavingsAngel.com is Michigan-based subscription coupon-matching site that includes metro Detroit in its local service areas. (Keep in mind: if you shop in Toledo, a Detroit-based list may or may not work.)
  • I do my own coupon matching after reading through the sales fliers that arrive in my newspapers and in my mail. If you have your coupon box or binder organized (I sort my box by product categories), it is a fairly quick task for you to read the fliers and pick out your own coupon matches.
  • Most grocery and drugstore coupons are distributed with the Sunday newspapers. I recommend home delivery so you get all the inserts intended for your zip code or delivery districts. (Ask about new subscriber deals.) The next best option is purchasing a newspaper in the store. Avoid unattended vending machines if you are in search of coupons. (I have a report about changes in the Sunday newspaper coupon market at Sunday newspaper coupons are an endangered species.)
  • Beg for leftover coupons from a newspaper-reading friend / relative / neighbor. If enough people find out you are a coupon-clipping shopper, you will soon get more coupons than you can possibly use.
  • Talk about coupons and trade tips at Hot Coupon World.
  • Watch for double coupon deals. In the Monroe County, Mich., area, Kroger, Meijer and Busch’s all double coupon values up to 50 cents each. Food Town in Monroe, Rockwood, Temperance and Lambertville also double coupons up to 50 cents. There have been rare occasions when the Monroe Kmart will double coupons. Do pay attention to the bottom line pricing so you know when it’s better to do double coupon or shop elsewhere.
  • Pay close attention to the mouse print on the Kmart sales fliers. There have been frequent situations where special coupon promotions are taking place at the Super Kmarts but not at the smaller Kmarts such as the Monroe store. This can be confusing when you compare the ads in the Detroit Free Press vs. the ads in The Monroe Evening News. When the promotion says “Super Kmart only,” the SuperK stores in Southeast Michigan / northwest Ohio are: Southgate; Taylor; Telegraph near 8 Mile in Detroit; Fremont, Ohio; Maidson Heights; and Bloomfield Hills.
  • Learn how your favorite stores handle coupons bundled with other specials such as in-store promotions or rebate checks. An example: if you have a coupon for $1 off two boxes of cereal, and there is a buy one, get one free offer on that brand, you will likely need to buy four boxes to bundle these two offers together.
  • Dollar General accepts manufacturer coupons.
  • Save a Lot takes manufacturer coupons.
  • Kroger has three eCoupon services available for your Kroger shopper card: an e-coupon program with Proctor and Gamble; also Shortcuts.com and Cellfire will also link to your Kroger card.
  • Internet printable coupons have some technology limitations. If you do want to check out the coupon sites, Melissa at A Penny Closer has some tips at Printing Cash at Home: My Favorite Coupon Sites. There is also a good background article at About.com.
  • Heather at the Greenest Dollar explains How to save money at the drugstore by picking out the best bargains.
  • You can save a lot of money by participating in the drugstore rebate promotions. Living Almost Large has how-to tips at CVS Extra Care Bucks Explained. I got started on the drugstore promotions by signing up first for the Rite Aid program. The Walgreens EasySaver program was discontinued in April 2009.
  • BeCentsAble explains Target promotions.
  • The Digerati Life wrote Coupon Tips and Tricks That Can Cut Your Grocery Bill by 80 percent.
  • Dorsch Memorial Branch Library in downtown Monroe has a coupon sharing box on the first floor. Milan Public Library also has a coupon sharing box. Please cut out all coupons that you contribute to a library coupon exchange box — it’s easier for the next shopper to find what she needs when the coupons are ready to use.
  • This isn’t a “coupon,” but Food Town in Monroe, Lambertville, Temperance and Rockwood, Mich., gives 10 percent off to senior citizens on Wednesdays. The discount excludes sale items, cigarettes, lottery and alcohol.
  • You’ll find many more tips in the Monroe on a Budget archives under coupon tips.

Sales fliers

  • The advertising insert schedules and routes are requested by the advertisers. In an area such as Monroe County where major newspaper markets overlap, you may find an ad that is in one newspaper, but not another. You need to pay close attention to the details because sometimes the ad from the out-of-town newspaper doesn’t apply to the Monroe store.
  • Saturday inserts in The Monroe Evening News usually include Rite Aid (sale starts Sunday) and Busch’s (sale starts Monday). Sunday inserts in the MEN usually include Kroger (sale starts Monday), CVS, Meijer, Walgreens, Kmart and Target. Monday grocery ads in the MEN usually are Hi-Lite Supermarket and Danny’s Fine Foods.
  • The Detroit Free Press now has the majority of their sales fliers in the Sunday newspaper. Some customers used to get their Sunday sales fliers in the Saturday newspapers, but that is no longer possible with the delivery cutbacks for the Detroit Free Press / Detroit News.
  • The Ann Arbor News has announced plans for going to delivery twice a week with most of the news on the web. I don’t know what their sales flier schedule has been, but the Sunday paper will be one of the two dates of print publication.
  • Read all the sales fliers, even for the stores you normally don’t shop at. I started going to Hi-Lite Supermarket on occasion when I realized from the sales fliers how good their prices can be.
  • Keep the sales fliers for any grocery and drug stores you might shop at during the week with your shopping list. It’s entirely possible that you might run out of this or that item mid-week and you’ll want to refresh your memory on who has the best price for that product.

Fresh produce

  • Grow a vegetable or herb garden. A kitchen window or basement window might provide enough space and light for an indoor potted garden. Depending on what you and your friends grow during the season, you can trade produce between families.
  • Take advantage of the community garden plots at Munson Park in Monroe (contact City of Monroe Recreation Department) or Monroe Church of the Nazarene; and the IHM sisters in Monroe have an organic garden.
  • If you don’t have a green thumb, you can still get garden-fresh produce. For example, Monroe Farmer’s Market in the 200 block of N. Monroe St. is open Tuesday and Saturday mornings during the harvest season and on Saturdays year-round.
  • If you buy produce at the supermarket, the Lightening blogger has great tips at Reducing the Grocery Budget-Fruit and Vegetables. When you do buy fresh produce, be sure use it quickly. For example, lettuce goes into salad one day, BLTs another day and taco filling another day.
  • What are some frugal and yummy recipes with fresh produce? Check out the recipes at Michigan Project Fresh.
  • Invest in the special plastic tubs that are designed for produce storage. There also are special bags on the market for fruits and veggies, but reuseable tubs are cheaper in the long run. I have been very pleased with the produce tubs.
  • Michigan State University has an on-line resource on home canning, freezing and drying of food. The MSU Extension office in Monroe also has a book you can purchase for about $16 about food preservation techniques.
  • Freezing and canning jars and equipment can be expensive to purchase, but most of this is a one-time investment. You can re-use the jars and rings and the freezer lids. The metal canning lids are the only one-time-use pieces. Canning supplies do occasionally go on sale or on coupon. I’ve even seen that stuff at a garage sale.
  • The National Center for Home Food Preservation is a great resource for canning techniques and proven recipes.

Bulk purchases

If you are wondering what you get in these grocery-by-the box programs, here’s a snapshot of what arrived in my March 2009 Great Food For All box.

Generally these are a mix of frozen and canned products that you can then use in your meal planning throughout the month. In this picture, the brown cubes are cheesecake bites. The red pouch is spaghetti sauce. The orange squares are frozen mango pieces.

Here are the details on those programs:

  • The Angel Food Ministries bulk food purchase program is open to anyone of any income level, and has delivery sites in Dundee, Monroe, Lambertville, Detroit, Toledo and Ann Arbor. I’ve found Angel Food packages to be a great complement to coupon queen tricks. You have to order and pay for Angel Food in advance of delivery date.
  • The Great Food for All bulk food purchase program is also open to anyone of any income level. There are delivery sites in Dundee and Toledo. You have to order and pay for GFFA boxes in advance of delivery date. The order and delivery dates for GFFA and AF fall at different times during the month.
  • Share really big purchases with someone else. On at least three occasions in recent years, my parents have ordered a half-cow from their local butcher, and us siblings bought pro-rated shares of that meat from Mom and Dad.
  • If you like warehouse quantities but not the warehouse membership fees, check out Gordon Food Service in Frenchtown Township, which does not require a membership card.
  • Meijer has some “food service” sized selections in its grocery aisles and bulk grocery orders available on line.
  • Alice.com is an online purchase service that features pantry goods such as toothpaste, toilet paper and cereal bars.
  • DollarTree.com has bulk purchases available on line.
  • Another possibility for those in the Monroe and Toledo areas is groceries by auction. The Ottawa Lake Auction House has been hosting weekly grocery auctions, and business has picked up quite a bit in the early part of 2009.

Frugal recipes

  • Acquire one or two basic cookbooks that feature a variety of homecooking recipes with easy instructions and commonly available ingredients. Many a homemaker over the years has relied on her Betty Crocker or a Better Homes and Gardens cookbook for everyday cooking.
  • Hillbilly Housewife posts menu recommendations based on Angel Food deliveries.
  • The Sense to Save blog has posted a Recipe Cost Calculator.
  • The USDA web site has a resource collection called Eat Right When Money’s Tight.
  • The Recipe Finder database at the USDA web site has more than 400 frugal recipes compiled by nutrition counselors to help food stamp families make the most of their grocery budgets. The database includes favorite dishes from several cultures.
  • The WIC Works Learning Center is a collection of recipe databases aimed at low-income families.
  • Another frugal recipe site is sponsored by Bush’s Beans: Vegetable with More: 1,000 recipes with beans!
  • How about a “real family”’s approach to beans? See An Ode to the Inexpensive Bean at The Simple Dollar.
  • A Year of CrockPotting has recipes you can make with a CrockPot slow cooker.
  • Aldi Queen features recipes with groceries you can by at Aldi.
  • And Supercook is a free web site (registration required) where you can enter ingredients that are in your kitchen and the site will recommend recipes based on what you’ve already got at home.

In the meantime, watch for blog posts that I list under category “groceries”. On the blog, I’m listing sales announcements for stores in the Monroe, Mich., area, my “shopping hall of fame” posts and news headlines about food prices.

P.S. I have a Power Point presentation (click here to see it) on “Grocery Shopping on a Budget”. If you would like the budget blogger to speak at your event or meeting in Monroe County, Mich.,  e-mail me.

(If you are one of my local readers and need a helping hand beyond this list of tips, go to my focus page “Where to find food assistance in Monroe County.”)

Last updated Sept. 6, 2009.